Producers of "Produce X 101," the fourth season of Mnet's yearly audition program, are accused of manipulating the vote. Ironically, it was Mnet that called in Seoul police in the face of fans' growing anger. Capture from Instagram @produce_x_101 |
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency has started an investigation into vote counting irregularities involving Mnet's audition program, Produce X 101, in its latest selection of finalists who are up for debut as an idol team. Angry fans are organizing themselves to file a suit against Mnet.
Amid the growing controversy fed by fans' anger and suspicions, the music channel asked for police help, accusing some of the program's producers of failing to do their duty.
The controversy flared up on July 19, when the final episode of Produce X 101 revealed the eleven finalists by votes. But some of them were separated by the same exact number of votes, something of extremely low probability.
Only eleven members get a chance to debut as project boy band "X1" but as shown in the table above, some of them were separated by the exact same number of votes, raising suspicion among the fans. The lineup of photos selected, left, are captured from Instagram @x1official101. |
Some fans have signed an online petition on presidential Cheongwadae website calling for proper explanation, while others organized themselves to get to the bottom of this controversy, demanding Mnet raw data of the votes from the producers.
They planned to take legal action. "Produce X 101" producers have apologized on its Facebook and insisted that the rankings are correct, adding that there were errors in rounding decimal figures in calculating the contestants' proportion of the entire votes.
They have explained the repetitive vote differences that to double check the result, the producers have calculated the percentages of the votes and rounded them off to two decimal places, which they had re-calculated them back into the numbers of the votes.
Ha Tae-kyung pointed out that 2nd decimal places end with either .00 or .05, an extremely unlikely outcome. Capture from Facebook @radiohahapage |
To the explanation, Rep. Ha Tae-kyung of the conservative opposition Bareunmirae Party pointed out that it doesn't make sense mathematically and in terms of probability. He shared his own calculation table following program producers' explanation.
Mnet officially apologized on Facebook. Saying, "We sincerely apologize for the controversy over the live streamed results of "Produce X 101."